Yet neither Bloom nor Necro Forge was enough to harness the magical strength that Lith’s tower bestowed upon him. His hope was that by combining Runesmithing with his own original techniques, he would be able to follow the footsteps of Menadion, the First Forgemaster and Solus’ mentor, if not even surpassing her.
“Faluel will only teach us Runesmithing, but that alone might not be enough. Her techniques will allow us to reach our full potential but that will just put on equal footing with normal Forgemasters, while we are nothing but.
“The tower allows us to tap into mana geysers and draw from Mogar’s power unlike any other mage, but at the same time, it makes conventional methods useless. We need to find a suitable technique to overcome such a limit.
“Faluel can’t help me with that unless I reveal your existence to her, and that’s not going to happen.” Lith said.
‘Thanks to the tower, Menadion’s artifacts are still considered unparalleled despite having been crafted with obsolete methods. There’s no telling what we could achieve if we couple its power with modern Forgemastering techniques.
‘I wonder if the tower is something master Menadion just found, inherited, or did she craft it herself.’ Solus thought while skimming through the untranslated booklet.
“Contrary to what we learned as Forgemasters, Runesmithing considers rings as high tier items. That’s because, unlike weapons and armor, they offer a limited surface for engraving runes.
“It makes rings more difficult to craft since a single poorly placed rune can greatly reduce the enchantment’s efficacy.” She said.
“Are you telling me that crafting methods for small objects are described at the end of the book?” Lith inwardly cursed at his bad luck.
“Mostly, yes. There are a few described in the pages that I’m about to translate, but we’re talking about simplest stuff.” She read a few pages, giving him a rough translation of the requirements to perform Runesmithing process.
“On top of that, I can’t rush my work. These experiments are supposed to be practiced in sequence so that the students carry over everything they learn from the simplest spells. This adds another layer of difficulty in doing a proper translation.”
“This is just perfect.” Lith hugged the wisp with enthusiasm, almost causing Solus to drop everything on the ground. “Creating runes costs money and I can’t waste time and ingredients crafting crap.”
Being them learning tools, most of the initial blueprints produced items without practical value.
“A simple ring is the best way to put to the test how well our Forgemastering techniques work with Runesmithing while keeping our expenses to a minimum. As soon as you find the description of a ring we could use, send me the list of the necessary ingredients and I’ll do the rest.”
Lith left Solus’s room and went outside to keep training at controlling his Origin Flames. He was now focused solely on producing small amounts of fire. Each attempt required very little life force so the new experiments caused a minimum amount of strain upon his body compared to his previous training methods.
Lith was so focused that noon arrived and passed without him noticing. From time to time, he would send a stray thought to the tower to check on the map completion rate and Solus’s progress with the booklet.
‘This is interesting. Quality and quantity of Origin Flames might be closely related since no matter how small the life force spark is, the fire tends to propagate like, well, fire. It just loses power since the area of effect is the same but the energy behind the phenomenon is reduced.
‘If I’m right, to produce higher quality flames I don’t need to spend more life force, just to focus it to the limit and…’ His train of thoughts derailed when something pulled at his consciousness.
‘Fuck me sideways! Today I forgot to report twice already. Kamila must be worried sick. Can you hold the fort while I’m away, Solus?’ Lith’s army amulet was blinking, but he couldn’t reply without giving out his location.
‘No problem, but if you go outside our mind link’s range, I will not be able to contact you if the spheres find something, so make it quick. Also, we must find a name for those things. Calling them glass spheres sounds wrong.’ She replied.
‘Solus’s Eyes?’ Lith returned to the first floor, using the Warp Mirror to instantly arrive at the wreckage site.
‘Too long and my eyes work perfectly, thanks. You are a Wyrmling, so what about Wyrmling Balls?’
‘If we were on Earth, I’d say we’d got seconds away from getting sued with such a name. Sentries?’ Lith crossed over the dimensional tunnel and activated the communication amulet.
‘Sentries. A fitting name for our scouting units. See you soon.’
“Ranger Verhen, are you there? Is everything alright” Kamila asked the moment Lith’s hologram appeared. Her voice was calm and professional, but Lith could see from her eyes that she was on the verge of panic.
“Ranger Verhen reporting for duty, and yes, I’m fine. I apologize for being late but I was so focused doing my job that I lost track of time.”
“Did you find the culprits already?” She sighed in relief.
“No. As you can see by my coordinates, I was investigating the area and…”
“Lith Verhen, let me get this straight.” From the sound of her voice, Lith guessed that if he had a middle name, Kamila would have used it and with a particular emphasis at that.
“According to Baroness Mergrave’s report, you traveled to Zantia and made contact with her right after sunrise, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Which means that you arrived at the scene in about two hours…”
“One, actually.” Lith corrected her. He was half proud of his speed and half certain that somehow, he was digging his own grave.
“Can you explain to me why, in the last six hours, even though you had a perfectly working communication amulet at hand and you were aware of how dangerous the situation is, even though you failed to find the slightest clue, did it never cross your mind to give me, I mean the Headquarters, a call?
“Before answering, I want you to know that the only reason why the army didn’t send reinforcements to your last known position is that I personally assured our commanding officer that you work best alone and that it would have been a waste of resources.”
After Lith had shared with her his hybrid nature and his ability to use magic like an Emperor Beast, Kamila knew that her boyfriend’s survival rate was at its peak when he had no one to witness the full scope of his abilities.
Not having heard from Lith for hours, she feared that if the army pinpointed his location while his life was endangered, they could not only discover his secrets, but also lead Lith to his demise.
Martial law was strict to begin with, but since the undead invasion had become of public knowledge things had become even worse. To overrule several military protocols and make sure Lith would have free rein, it had cost Kamila quite the effort, to the point of calling in favors and owing a few on her own.
Discovering that the missed reports she had fought so hard to cover up in order to protect his privacy if not his life from harm, were actually caused by Lith’s total disregard for his duty, almost made her pop a vein.
